


Don't Be Scared, I'm Still Here

by geez



Category: Logan (2017) - Fandom, Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Heavy Angst, Rogan, lowkey stole this from Grey's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-09-30 08:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10159220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geez/pseuds/geez
Summary: “God, Logan, you really look like shit.”He coughs and wipes the moisture from his beard, finally sets his sights on the person. She’s still beautiful. It might have been thirty years since he first looked at her but she’s just as pretty now as she was then, just a little different. More lines around her eyes, smile creases around her luscious mouth, a stress crease in her forehead that he remembers noticing only cropped up after everything went to shit. She looks older but then so does he. Scratch that- she looks older and he’s aged twenty years in seven. It’s a damn shame, is what it is. Still, he huffs out some approximation of a chuckle and twists his lips into a smile-sneer. “I know, Marie, thanks for remindin’ me.”





	

Nightmares change over time. As he gets older, as life gets progressively shittier, different things begin to terrify him. The old terrors of having white hot adamantium injected into his skeleton becomes old news. The pain was what got to him. The disbelief that people could do this to another man. Now though- he lives in pain all the time. His limbs ache with the effort to stay upright. The metal in his bones is a constant companion, a burden that gets harder to bear everyday. Pain means nothing anymore. He deals with it every day. The cruelty of man no longer surprises him. He’s lived two lifetimes where humanity has disregarded compassion in favor of so called security. Man’s lack of morality, of conscience, is something he is resigned to. Point is, those nightmares no longer shake him to the core. Logan’d venture to say that he gets _more_ rest when he relives those moments of blinding pain. 

No, what really gets him, the thing that shakes him awake in the early hours of the morning, are their faces. The happy, peaceful expressions they wore that first day he woke up, having just returned from the 1970s. He remembers how he thought, just for one moment, that everything was okay. That they’d be okay. That he’d done good. 

What a fuckin’ piece of shit. 

Storm, Scott, Jean, _Rogue_ , the kids- all gone. Turned to dirt, only remembered by a broken shadow of a man. 

He relives that day. Those first glorious moments of waking, of seeing Marie just down the hall. Her eyes had lit up, her lips had been curved in a sweet smile. He’d been struck dumb. In his dreams, the faces of the young ones all blur together, morphing from one face into another as he walks down the hall. He hears Storm’s voice, sees a flash of her bright hair, and even though he’s relived these moments far too many times, he feels peace at the sound of his friend’s soft voice. Then, Jean and Scott. The ease of those few minutes with them aches. He longs for that familiar, biting comradery with Scott, those embers of attraction that mellowed into playful friendship with Jeannie. They leave. And he sees Charles in all of his glory, capable and powerful once more. His friend’s eyes shine with knowledge and wit. Charles has just opened his mouth to speak when time speeds up. The precious months of peace fly by. And Logan is suddenly feeling the force of Charles’s seizures for the first time. This time, he has just enough time to watch Jean crumble to the ground, lifeless, after being unsuccessful at containing the professor’s power. He gets to hear Scott’s scream, gets to see Rogue’s hand stretching towards him. Logan juts his arm towards her. Just a little more, he thinks, reach a little bit farther. His fingers just graze hers. He gets a glimpse of the tears in her fearful brown eyes and Logan wants so much to reach her but he knows he can’t. 

That’s when he wakes up. 

The most jarring thing is usually how much his bones ache afterwards. In his dreams he’s healthy and strong and everything he was. When he wakes up his joints ache, his hands shake, his eyes feel heavy. It’s always the same. Except for tonight. Tonight all the usual pains are accompanied by the most persistent headache Logan’s ever had. Black spots pop into his vision, slowly encroaching until he can’t tell which darkness is the night and which is his lack of sight. “Goddammit.” He mutters, hands scrubbing at his eyes in a foolhardy attempt to make it go away. Surprisingly, when he opens his eyes he can see again. Well, to a certain point but that’s neither here nor there. So he can’t see as well as he could anymore. So what. Everything else is going to shit, what’s another part of his body? 

“Having nightmares again?” 

“Fuck off.” He says, not even looking at the person perched on his sorry excuse for a dresser. Logan watches his hands shake as they reach for the cheap whiskey on the ground, tries to will them to be steady. 

“Sorry, hon, no can do.” They say, words lilting on the tail end of a laugh. There’s a moment of silence where they graciously let him take a swig of the alcohol. “God, Logan, you really look like shit.” 

He coughs and wipes the moisture from his beard, finally sets his sights on the person. She’s still beautiful. It might have been thirty years since he first looked at her but she’s just as pretty now as she was then, just a little different. More lines around her eyes, smile creases around her luscious mouth, a stress crease in her forehead that he remembers noticing only cropped up after everything went to shit. She looks older but then so does he. Scratch that- she looks older and he’s aged twenty years in seven. It’s a damn shame, is what it is. Still, he huffs out some approximation of a chuckle and twists his lips into a smile-sneer. “I know, Marie, thanks for remindin’ me.” 

~

She comes with him on his drives, sometimes. She just sits quietly, observing the people, same as him. The little snapshots of mundane life relax her and sometimes he catches a tiny smile on her face. She’s got that small melancholic smile on her face now, watching the group of adolescent punk’s in garrish prom tuxedos. “Remember when I was like that?” She says to him. It’s not a real question, he knows. He’s caught up in memories of her being carefree and safe, wishes someone could send him back in time again, give him a chance to make things right. But it seems this reality is gonna stick this time. God only gives a man so many opportunities. “God, I was so obnoxious. Remember when I picked the lock on your door and stole all your beer? I don’t think you’ve ever been so mad at me in your life. What made it even better was that I was so far gone I didn’t even care.” Marie laughs. “I literally fell asleep while you were yelling at me. Then I woke up in my bed the next morning with the shittiest hangover ever.” 

“Serves you right.” He finally says, eyes crinkling with mischief. “That was a special brew and you ‘n your goddamn friends wasted all of it.” 

“No, Logan,” Marie counters, hand pushing a white streak of hair behind her ear. “We had fun.” 

~ 

She hovers behind him while he struggles to get Charles into bed, visibly shaken after his episode. “Oh, Professor.” Marie whispers as he closes his eyes, hand hovering over his forehead in a phantom caress. “What’s happened to you?” 

Logan shifts his weight off his bad leg and grumbles, “Life’s a bitch, kid.” 

“Gee, thanks, Logan, I thought life was all sunshine and rainbows.” She says with a sneer, stepping away from Charles and turning towards the door. He follows her. “You’re such a dick.” 

“I know.” He steps in front of her and opens the door. She brushes by him just as his entire body shakes with the force of barrage of coughing. It doesn’t last very long but he’s left breathing harder than before. Marie simply stands and watches him. 

“Caliban’s right, you know. You’re getting worse.” 

“It’s fine, Marie. Leave it alone.” 

“No! You can’t keep going like this and you know it!” 

“Oh do I?!” 

“Yes!” She yells back, exasperation filling her voice. “You’re weaker, your healing isn’t as fast as it used to be. I mean, Christ, Logan, you can’t even read the label on a bottle of pills!” 

“I’ll manage.” He says obstinately. 

She steps towards him, bare hand resting on his cheek. “You’re lying to yourself, sugar.” 

“And how would you know?” 

Marie smiles softly, eyes brimming with tears. “Because I’m in your head, Logan.” 

He sighs. The illusion is shattered by her touch. His mind can’t fake what it doesn’t know. She always looks so real. She sounds the same, moves the same, but the real Marie has been dead for years. He _watched_ her die. Saw the light leave her eyes. 

This ghost of her has been following him around for a couple months now. Mostly he doesn’t question it because he likes the company. She doesn't really cause trouble, just pesters him with her pretty smile and the voice he's still amazed his brain gets right. He knows what it means. The illness caused by the adamantium is just getting worse. Probably won’t be long now. A couple months if he stays out of trouble? 

Of course, trouble has always found its way to his door. Trouble like that douchebag from Transigen and his little Mexican girlfriend. He can never catch a break, apparently. 

He’s dyin’ and Marie is here to take him to other side. 

“Just...leave it alone, Marie.” He opens the door to the warehouse and walks right through her. He hears her unhappy huff but makes sure his face doesn’t give anything away. The last thing Logan needs is Caliban getting any ideas about his mental state. 

“Who were you talking to?” Caliban asks him, eying him up and down with suspicion. 

Logan stares just past his shoulder, watches Marie disappear from sight in the time it takes him to blink. “No one.” He says and grabs at the whiskey on the table with a glower and a hard shoulder into Caliban’s back. 

Fuck both of ‘em. Fuck everything. Fuck his messed up brain and his dying body and especially fuck Marie for not giving him a moment’s peace, even when she’s long dead. 

Logan stumbles up the stairs to his bed, wilfully ignoring the aberration just outside of his line of sight. 

~

Logan’s drive back to Mexico after discovering Gabriella dead is reckless, to say the least. If Pearce has any brains at all he’ll be coming for him and with the resources Transigen has, Logan knows he doesn’t have much time to get Charles out of there. 

“Pearce has that little girl.” Marie says without warning, he’s too keyed up to hide the flinch at her sudden appearance. 

“Not my problem, kid.” 

“Used to be.” She says flippantly, piercing him with her gaze. “What happened to _that_ Logan?” 

He eases on the brakes as he reaches the line to cross the border, pulling out his phone to call Mrs. Gonzalez about getting the boat a little earlier than planned. “Died about seven years ago, Marie.” He bites out. “Right around the same time you did. Remember that part?” 

“Of course I do.” Marie whispers, gaze softening a little but never leaving his profile.  
He doesn’t look at her, just dials the number. When he looks up she’s gone again. “Fuckin’ hell, woman.” He mutters as Mrs. Gonzalez answers the phone. 

~ 

Marie doesn’t show up during the gunfight, which is probably just as well considering she would have been more annoying than Charles about going back for the girl. He reckons the only reason she didn’t appear was because Charles was doing a good enough job being a moralistic pain in the ass for the both of them. 

Said moralistic pain in the ass and the first new mutant he’s seen in twenty-five goddamn years, are currently asleep in the back. Gabriella’s face is still frozen on the screen, the glasses he bought are digging into his nose. Logan looks out the windshield only to have his view obscured by her. She’s perched on the hood, not looking at him, but he knows what Marie looks like when she’s waiting. His bones groan as he gets out of the car. He pops his back, raises his arm above his head in some approximation of a stretch, loudly exhaling with relief. 

She still hasn’t said anything, just gazes up at the stars. 

Logan remembers this tactic. She’d always do this whenever she wanted to talk about something really personal. Marie would sit still as a statue and just wait him out, knowing he’d speak up eventually. For a moment he wonders at the absurdity of the fact that he’s currently stuck in a battle of wills with a hallucination his brain cooked up, but then she never seems any less real to him. She’s always Marie. Just Marie. 

“I know what you’re going to say, kid.” He says wearily, leaning heavily against the side of the car. 

“Well I am a side-effect of the heavy metal poisoning slowly killing you.” Marie commented drily. 

“She’s not really my daughter, Marie. They created her in a lab.” 

Marie drops her head back in an exaggerated eye roll, slowly turning her face towards him. “They used your DNA, right? And she’s got your mutation?” Marie shrugs. “Sure sounds like she’s your daughter to me.” He doesn’t respond, just glares. “Look, sugar, whether you accept it or not that little girl is your child. And she needs your help.” 

“What can I do for her, huh? I’m broken, you said so yourself.” 

“Not all help is breaking bones and skewering men, Logan.” She noted. “Laura’s got that part covered. Take her to the coordinates. Pearce is after you, anyways. At least then you’ll be runnin’ towards something worthwhile.” 

He nods, too tired to argue with her. Besides, putting as much difference between them and Pearce as he could would never be a bad idea. “Okay, kid.” 

“Get some rest, Logan.” She whispers, suddenly right in front of him. She kisses his cheek and, god, he wishes he could feel it. 

~ 

He finds the comic book while he’s snooping around Laura’s backpack. He flips through it briskly, not really stopping to look at anything in particular, until he sees a shock of white and brown hair. The drawing doesn’t really look like her, and her costume is just fuckin’ ridiculous, but that’s Marie alright. And that’s him saving her. “You see this shit?” He says out loud, knowing from experience that she usually shows up when he talks to her. 

“They sure do like to draw you as a little guy, don’t they?” She teases. “I like the yellow suit.” 

“It’s all a bunch of horse shit.” He sneers, tempted to throw the damn thing away. 

“Of course it is, Logan, those things are for kids. They’re not supposed to be all doom and gloom. No one wants to know that Professor X got dementia and killed all of the X-Men. That doesn’t seem like a nice story, does it?” 

“I don’t know why we have to be stories to begin with.” Logan grumbles, eyes catching the coordinates that match the set on the envelope Gabriella gave him. 

“They give people hope, Logan. There’s nothin’ wrong with having a little hope.” 

“Hope just leads to disappointment, Marie.” He catches her eye and jerks his head to the coordinates on the page. “Her nurse got them from a comic book. This safe haven you want me to take her to doesn’t exist.” 

Logan doesn’t give her time to reply, just stands and walks out of the room. 

He can’t believe he let a fuckin’ hallucination convince him there was even a half a chance at this being legit. 

~ 

The gunshot rings out from inside the house just as Logan is beginning to forget why he was so adamant about leaving as soon as possible. Now he remembers. Bad shit happens to the people around him. 

Rushing into the house he gets there just in time to watch some soulless clone of him walk by with a screaming Laura in his clutches. Logan is frozen, looking frantically between the little girl yelling for help and the silence that waits for him upstairs. “Logan, you gotta move.” Marie says helplessly. “Go!” 

She follows him into Charles’s room, sees the same horror as he does, and even though Logan knows deep in his bones that there’s no way Charles will survive this, he still listens when Marie tells him to put pressure on the wound. “It wasn’t me,” He whispers to his oldest friend. “It wasn’t me.” 

Logan staggers outside, Laura’s screams bringing him the smallest relief. They haven’t taken her yet. She’s still in reach. He opens the truck bed and lays Charles down inside. “Logan he doesn’t have long.” Marie’s small, shaking hand brushes over the old man’s forehead uselessly. 

“Just take it easy, Charles, okay? Don’t let up the pressure.” He instructs, knowing that it’s useless. These will be the professor’s final moments. Soon, Logan will be all alone, with just a ghost to keep him company. 

Marie cries as Charles murmurs his last words. All Logan feels is mind numbing rage. They took Charles but he’ll be damned if they take that little girl. 

~

She’s silent as he finishes covering Charles’s gave. Simply watches him as he gasps some kind of nonsense about water. Only says something when he starts banging on the steering wheel because fucking truck won’t start. “Fuck!” He yells. 

“Logan, calm down.” 

He ignores her. Chooses to get out and start hitting the truck with a shovel instead. 

“Logan, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Marie is as calm as he’s ever seen her, impassive and closed off. He brings the shovel down right through her and watches her disappear like smoke. 

Then he goes after the side mirror. “Fuckin’ piece of shit truck! God!” The window smashes. “Dammit!” A dent in the door. “Fuck!” 

“Logan! Stop it!” She finally screams, face contorting with grief and anger. 

He staggers back, finally feels the extent of his wounds. Logan is vaguely aware of falling to his knees, then feels his head hit the concrete of the road. He hears Marie murmuring “Oh, sugar.” As he loses consciousness he could swear he can feel her hand running through his hair. 

Logan wonders if this is what dying feels like. 

~

When Laura finally convinces him to fall asleep, he dreams of Marie. 

His breath comes easier and he notices that his hands look less weathered. There’s a cigar hanging from his lips. The road he’s driving down is snow covered and everything is quiet except for Marie’s content humming next to him. Logan looks over at her pretty face resting in a glove covered hand and smiles. Life is good. This is good. 

He drives for what seems like forever and just a few moments all in one, time passing as it often does in dreams; nonlinearly and yet with perfect logic. Marie’s stopped her humming in favor of studying his profile intently. It doesn’t make him uncomfortable so much as curious. “Like what you see, kid?” 

Marie cocks her head, looks too melancholic for such a happy dream. “I loved you, you know.” 

Logan sobers up immediately. “I know.” 

When he wakes up he’s alone in the desert. 

~

The green shit that the kids injected him with has him feeling better than he has in months, but for some reason they don’t make Marie go away. In fact, they might even make her stronger. She hasn’t left his side he woke up. It’s like she can’t tear her eyes away from this group of kids anymore than he can. 

“Look at them.” She urges, eyes glossed over with tears. “They can still laugh.” 

“They shouldn’t stay in one place for so long.” 

“You worry too much.” Marie scoffs. “You heard Rictor, they’re leaving before dawn tomorrow.” 

“How do you know his name?” Logan asks, incredulous. 

“Because _you_ know his name, sugar.” She says flippantly, rolling her eyes in mock annoyance. 

“Hmph.” Is the only response he gives her but he does turn his gaze towards the circle of kids sitting around the fire. They’ve seen some shit, these kids, and yet here they are. Laughing, smiling, enjoying being together. He misses that feeling of comradery, of complete and utter trust in the person beside you. 

“You could go with them, you know. If you want.” 

“No I can’t, Marie, don’t play that shit with me.” 

“Why the hell not?” 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, sweetheart, but I’ve got both feet in the grave. I’m not putting that kinda weight on a group of kids.” 

“You mean you don’t want Laura to see you like that.” She interprets, brown eyes searching his face. “How could you possibly think about leaving your daughter?” 

“Bad shit happens to the people I care about, Marie. You should know that more than anyone.” Marie just rolls her eyes. “I didn’t just lose you once, okay, kid, I lost you twice. I did everything right, I changed the goddamn future, and you still wound up dyin’ in my arms! Does that mean nothing to you? Because it sure seems like a fuckin’ sign from the universe to me. ‘Dear Logan, never love anyone ever again. Also, fuck you. Signed, Universe.’” 

“I don’t want you to die alone.” Marie murmurs. 

“We don’t always get what we want.” 

~

Blood is filling his lungs fast. Logan knows he only has a minute or two before he goes. He wants to tell Laura to just leave him but he doesn’t have the strength to tell her to stop chopping at the wood. Marie is hovering over them both. She kneels on his other side when Laura finally frees him from the stomp, grasping his hand. Logan’s only slightly worried that this time he can feel the smoothness of her skin. He grasps Laura’s wrist as an anchor. He needs a little more time, just a little more time. 

Logan looks at his daughter’s face and tries to imagine a world where he actually gets to be her dad. Maybe it’s a world where Transigen doesn’t fuck around with nature, a world where the school is still up and running, a world where he and Marie are together. Logan has a vision of teaching Laura to hone her senses in the New York forest, laughing and horsing around, playing hide and seek. That version of her doesn’t yet know how to gut a man three times her size. 

“Logan.” Marie calls him back to reality, her other hand moving through his hair. He can feel her nails slightly dragging over his scalp. It makes him sigh. 

“Laura...” His voice is breathy and weak. He doesn’t have time, not enough time. Two hundred years of life and he’s spending the end of it wanting more time. “Laura. Don’t be what they made you.” 

His daughter gives the briefest of nods, more tears spilling from her eyes. Her whimper of “Daddy” is both the worst punch in the gut he’s ever experienced and the greatest gift she could ever give him. 

Marie is still beside him, a comforting presence. “You can let go, sugar. The fighting’s done. She’s safe. You did good, Logan, you did so good.” 

Briefly he thinks of something a Japanese girl with striking red hair once told him about how he’d die. The thought leaves him just as quickly as it came. Logan smiles, getting his fill of Laura while he can, holding her small hand in his grip while he still has the strength to. 

“So this is what it feels like.” 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Still heartbroken about Logan. Still want to drag the rest of you down with me. Sorry but also not sorry? But also really sorry because this one is a tough pill to swallow. 
> 
> Leave a comment and yell at me! Validate my existence! 
> 
> Side note: this is my fourth time trying to post this my computer is a little bitch please comment. 
> 
> follow me on tumblr: kamlo-ren


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